A good writer once told me that if your entire plot is dependent upon flashbacks, you started the story in the wrong place. The Stirling novels upon which they're based start right at the flash and deal with its immediate aftereffects. But when the plot moves forward, it stays forward.

That's my only real problem with Revolution - it's hard to keep the future storyline in motion when they keep flashing back to "who were these guys?" The whole point of a setting like this? It doesn't freakin' matter who they were or what they did. Characters can talk about it when demonstrating a rare skill or having casual campfire conversation, but enough with the flashbacks.

OtherBrotherDarryl:Is Revolution any good? From far away, it looks a lot like some other shows recently which haven't lived up to expectation.

There are too many things that make it difficult to suspend disbelief.

1. Why does everyone look like they just stepped out of the Gap?

2. What happened? It appears that electrical current won't flow. They can get a steam locomotive to work but apparently not any internal combustion engines, even simple ones that only require a spark plug. If electrons won't flow, why are there electrical storms and why does the human nervous system still work?

3. Why has the bad guy been holding Elizabeth Mitchell prisoner for a decade if she hasn't talked up to this point?

4. Why do the bad guys only attack one at at time so Miles can dispatch each with his sword?

5. Why did they imply Elizabeth Mitchell had been tortured but in the next scene she looked fine?

6. Why was Elizabeth Mitchell standing in front of a brightly lit window while wearing a diaphanous blouse? And how do her bras still have enough elastic in them after 15 years to perform as admirably as they do?

7. How does everyone keep getting punched in the face, especially the brother, and never have any bruises.

Extremely hokey sword fights without blood and suffering...one slash to the stomach or back and the bad guy goes down immediately and quietly, without any of the realistc wailing that would take place if you'd just disembowled a guy.

And stupid "Lost" type concept of electricity coming in only pendant type amulet charm things...that turn on at mysterious, seemingly uncontrolled times.And, the fact that there's 12 of them spread out over god knows where.

I'd say solid acting by Gus Fring and Rita's ex from Dexter...and maybe from Slashy McFast...whoever the lead bad-ass good guy is...and whoever runs the army, Munson or whatever his name is...they pretty much hold the show together. The chicks are nice to look at, I guess...Jeff Fahey showing up last week was pretty cool...but overall, everyone else sucks!

Still giving it a chance cuz there's nothing else better to watch on Mondays except Market Warriors and Miller Gaffney's totally hot long legs...and luckily for Revolution, they don't come on at the same time!

Revolution is a great premise, but it aspires only to be average old-world network TV. Compared to something on cable, like Game of Thrones or the Walking Dead, Revolution is ridiculously low-budget: the camera work is boring, the acting is mediocre, the sets are cheap, and the writing is what you'd expect when you hand a network writer hack an outline and give him/her a 2 week deadline.

Wellon Dowd:OtherBrotherDarryl: Is Revolution any good? From far away, it looks a lot like some other shows recently which haven't lived up to expectation.

There are too many things that make it difficult to suspend disbelief.

I want to know why the beard guy (wife tells me it's supposed to be the founder of a fiction-world Google?) is still chunky after 15 years of medieval living.

And bull-farking-shiat any of that would happen anyway. You can't tell me somewhere in a dusty file cabinet in the Pentagon there isn't this exact scenario. For that matter, they should have it anyway, just in case of some sort of EMP or cosmic ray event that would do close to the same thing.

Extremely hokey sword fights without blood and suffering...one slash to the stomach or back and the bad guy goes down immediately and quietly, without any of the realistc wailing that would take place if you'd just disembowled a guy.

And stupid "Lost" type concept of electricity coming in only pendant type amulet charm things...that turn on at mysterious, seemingly uncontrolled times.And, the fact that there's 12 of them spread out over god knows where.

I'd say solid acting by Gus Fring and Rita's ex from Dexter...and maybe from Slashy McFast...whoever the lead bad-ass good guy is...and whoever runs the army, Munson or whatever his name is...they pretty much hold the show together. The chicks are nice to look at, I guess...Jeff Fahey showing up last week was pretty cool...but overall, everyone else sucks!

Still giving it a chance cuz there's nothing else better to watch on Mondays except Market Warriors and Miller Gaffney's totally hot long legs...and luckily for Revolution, they don't come on at the same time!

The DBS:I watched the crappy first episode and assumed it wouldn't last a season. I didn't know it was still on.

I'm amazed that no one seems to like the show, yet it was picked up for a full season. I get the feeling that Sci-Fi fans are so hard up for Sci-Fi that they'll attach themselves to anything delegated as Sci-Fi, regardless of quality.

FeedTheCollapse:The DBS: I watched the crappy first episode and assumed it wouldn't last a season. I didn't know it was still on.

I'm amazed that no one seems to like the show, yet it was picked up for a full season. I get the feeling that Sci-Fi fans are so hard up for Sci-Fi that they'll attach themselves to anything delegated as Sci-Fi, regardless of quality.

I should also point out I think the same thing about The Walking Dead. For as much excitement as I hear about new episodes, I hear nothing but biatching from everyone who's supposedly a fan.

FeedTheCollapse:The DBS: I watched the crappy first episode and assumed it wouldn't last a season. I didn't know it was still on.

I'm amazed that no one seems to like the show, yet it was picked up for a full season. I get the feeling that Sci-Fi fans are so hard up for Sci-Fi that they'll attach themselves to anything delegated as Sci-Fi, regardless of quality.

If a network wanted to make quality sci-fi and for cheap, all they'd have to do is make a TV version of 1632. Finding a rural town in WV and occasionally throwing swords and bad swedish actors at it wouldn't be that expensive.

Revolution is a terrible show. I gave it three episodes but there is nothing of value there. However, this from TFA makes up for it:

The greatest threat in the battle for younger viewers is the continuing appeal of top cable dramas. AMC's "The Walking Dead" smashed everything else on television in drawing young viewers for its premiere last week. Other cable series this fall, like "Sons of Anarchy" and "American Horror Story" on FX, are attracting more coveted young viewers than many network shows.

Mr. Greenblatt said every network had noticed the numbers posted by "The Walking Dead."

"I'm scrambling around to see if we have anything high-concept like that in development," he said.

Maybe networks will stop shoveling so much reality TV at us and we can get some watchable shows from them.

I'd like to see an anthology zombie show with every episode taking place in the same universe, with different scenarios each week. They wouldn't even have to all be in the US. Think of World War Z as a one hour series.

FeedTheCollapse:I should also point out I think the same thing about The Walking Dead. For as much excitement as I hear about new episodes, I hear nothing but biatching from everyone who's supposedly a fan.

That's because The Walking Dead is always capable of turning around on a dime. Just look at how bad most of last season was at the farm, then it had a great finale and has started off doing great this season. All the pieces were there, they just needed good episode-to-episode scripts.

Shows like Revolution, Terra Nova, FlashForward, and The Event were a mess from the start and needed a lot more than a single good script to turn around. They were too obsessed with being "the next Lost" to worry about making a quality show.

The DBS:I'd like to see an anthology zombie show with every episode taking place in the same universe, with different scenarios each week. They wouldn't even have to all be in the US. Think of World War Z as a one hour series.

FeedTheCollapse:I should also point out I think the same thing about The Walking Dead. For as much excitement as I hear about new episodes, I hear nothing but biatching from everyone who's supposedly a fan.

The first two episode from Season 3 took all of Season 2, ripped out its throat, ate its heard, watched it go zombie, and then BOOM! Head shot!

I get the feeling with Revolution that the writers don't have any idea where the story is going. They don't know from one week to the next what's going to happen.The mother is dead, now she's alive. The girl never met her uncle, but she remembers how he used to be. Militia boy is good/bad/good. Some things work, some things don't. There are no working engines... except for the goddam train.

wippit:FeedTheCollapse: I should also point out I think the same thing about The Walking Dead. For as much excitement as I hear about new episodes, I hear nothing but biatching from everyone who's supposedly a fan.

The first two episode from Season 3 took all of Season 2, ripped out its throat, ate its heard, watched it go zombie, and then BOOM! Head shot!

/like a machete to a convicted felon's head.

I guess, though I still contend that Sci-Fi fans are much more willing to wade through utter shiat in the hopes that it will eventually be of better quality. Hell, most of the people I know of were biatching since the first season.

/personally, I just really don't give a shiat about Zombies. If you've seen the first 3 Living Dead films,you have seen pretty much every iteration of the Zombie trope out there. I thought the effects in Walking Dead were great, but the main story was cliche and/or uninteresting.

I'm still wondering what the long-term plan for Last Resort is. I'm liking it so far (ignoring the obvious military inaccuracies), but it still feels like it would be a great mini-series. I don't see yet how it could go on for several seasons and remain interesting.

I don't know enough about bio-electricity to make a guess. But everything I've seen says an EMP won't hurt people, so the same reason.

NeoCortex42:I stopped watching after the pilot episode, but have they said at all why electricity isn't working? Do they even have a semi-plausible technobabble excuse?

Not yet. Although Google-boy now knows it most be man-made, since the little chip device the guy made in the pilot can cancel the effect within a short radius and gets electronics to work. It's faily obvious there's some sort of global EMP-field being generated.